Everyday life

As you may have noticed, Plant Scientust has been quiet for most of 2017. This wasn’t intentional, but a consequence of various, mostly positive events in my life that made it hard to find time and energy to write for the blog.

By far the most significant of these events was giving birth to my first child in the autumn. My son (who I shall refer to as Sprog) arrived after a straightforward labour and, although I can’t pretend that the earliest days of motherhood have been completely smooth sailing, becoming a parent has been an overwelmingly positive experience so far.

Pregnancy was one of the most amazing and weird experiences of my life. Even though I am a biologist I still find it hard to comprehend how I managed to grow a new human in the space of 9 months. In the second and third trimesters feeling the baby move inside my belly was exhilarating, often distracting and, when he kicked my ribs, painful. By the end of my pregnancy my friends and family were laughing at my slow waddling gait (to be fair, I was laughing too) and — due to a combination of feeling hot, swollen ankles and struggling to reach my shoe laces — I was still walking around in slip-on sandals when people around me were reaching for their winter coats…

Of course, the world doesn’t stop turning when you are pregnant so I’ve also been juggling my job, my voluntary work running a Girl Guide unit, and tending to my allotment. Even though I’ve stayed in pretty good health, tiredness and joint aches and pains in the last couple of months meant I had to spend much more time resting than normal. Fortunately people were generally very understanding when it took me longer than usual to do something I had promised. My husband was also very supportive and didn’t complain when he landed up cooking dinner even when it was supposed to be my turn.

I’ve also had a productive year at work. Alongside my usual editing tasks at eLife I researched and wrote my first two feature articles for the journal. The first discussed some of the many journals and other organisations that publish plain-language summaries of research articles. The second article discussed peer review in the context of research grant funding. I really enjoyed the challenge of writing the articles and I’m pleased with the end results.

I’m on maternity leave for the next few months so I’m planning to get back into science blogging as a bit of a break from looking after Sprog. Hopefully my next post will be ready in January.

Have you ever read a scientific paper and struggled to understand the main findings of the research? If so, you are not alone.

When I worked as a research scientist one of my biggest frustrations was how difficult it could be to read research papers, even those within my own field. Research papers are written in a very formal style with lots of jargon, long words and lots of nouns, which help to keep the word count down but also make the text harder to read.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not “anti-jargon”, I do think that careful use of jargon in articles meant for a specialised audience can be very helpful to readers. For example, using the term “photosynthesis” in a scientific paper on leaves is going to be much more concise and less clumsy than writing “the process by which some organisms use energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars” several times.

However, researchers working in different fields can all use different sets of jargon (like different dialects in a language) to the point that a plant scientist like me may not be equipped with the right vocabulary to understand a neuroscience paper (without a significant amount of googling and head-scratching at any rate). New technologies and advances in one field may be relevant to researchers working in other fields, so using different scientific dialects may delay the spread of new knowledge. Another issue is that a lot of scientific research is funded by public money and therefore should be answerable to the public. So how can we make the findings of scientific research more accessible to anyone who is interested?

The media play a big role in communicating the findings of research to the wider public. However, the media can only highlight a tiny fraction of research being published, and they (understandably) focus on the most exciting, weird or funny discoveries. But what about all the other research that might still be of interest to to other scientists and members of the public?

One way that some journals, medical charities and other scientific organisations are making research more accessible to broader audiences is by publishing summaries of research articles written in everyday language using few technical terms. This includes eLife (the journal I work for) and my current job involves producing plain-language summaries called “eLife digests” (you can read a selection of eLife digests on our Roots and Shoots blog.

To highlight the plain-language summaries eLife and other organisations produce, we (the eLife features team) have recently published a collection called “Plain-language summaries of research”. The collection includes articles and blogposts about the experiences of various organisations as well as our advice on how to write plain-language summaries. Furthermore, you can listen to my colleague Stuart King and I discuss plain-language summaries in the latest eLife podcast, episode 37.

The most exciting thing I learned while working on the collection is that there is an enormous variety of plain-language summaries out there covering different areas of science from astrophysics to ecology. Furthermore, different organisations target their summaries at different audiences. For example, the summaries produced by some medical journals and medical charities are often primarily aimed at patients and their families. On the other hand, some journals (e.g. PNAS) produce summaries that are aimed at other scientists who read the journal. I think all of these different approaches have a place in widening access to scientific research.

To help people find plain-language summaries on topics that interest them we have compiled a list of over 50 organisations that produce them. Please do make use of this list, and let eLife know of any other organisations that should be included.

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that I’ve been rather quiet this year. The main reason for this is that 2016 has not been kind to me. Following the loss of my oldest friend in January, several other things have hit my personal life this year including ill health (both to myself and members of my family) and the loss of my grandmother. These things have left my mental health in a more fragile state than normal so, to look after myself while keeping up with my day job and other responsibilities, the blog has had to take a back seat.

I don’t want to give you the impression that 2016 has been a complete disaster for me. I still enjoy my job at eLife and have taken on some new responsibilities this year, including managing the eLife podcast. In January I set up a new Girl Guide unit, which meets regularly to provide 10-14 year old girls in my local area with opportunities to have fun and learn new skills. We have a lot of fun at our meetings and the numbers of girls in the unit has gradually grown over the year. My friends and I have made good progress with the work on the run-down allotment plot we took on earlier this year. Most importantly, this year has highlighted how wonderful my friends and family are and how lucky I am to have them in my life.

The other reason that I have had less time to blog this year is that I’m currently taking a distance-learning course in proofreading. I decided to take this course to get some more formal training in proofreading and also to learn more about the publishing industry as a whole. Excluding my PhD – which felt more like working than studying – this is the first course of study I’ve taken since I finished my undergraduate degree in 2009. It does feel a bit strange to be working on “exercises” and “assignments” again, but I’m really enjoying it so far.

I’m starting to emerge from the cloud that seems to have followed me around this year so I’m hoping to be able to blog more often. Watch this space.

Blackberries change colour from red to black as they ripen. Image by Thomas’ pics (CC BY 2.0 via Flickr)

In England at this time of year, the hedgerows along country lanes are full of delicious fruits called blackberries. Just last week I spent an enjoyable afternoon with friends gorging on blackberries along the route of an old railway line in Norwich (now a footpath and cycleway). The berries are a good source of vitamin C and antioxidants, and are commonly used in desserts and preserves. Although I love collecting and eating blackberries, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the plant that produces them, the bramble (Rubus fruticosus agg.).

Rubus fruticosus agg. isn’t a single species, but instead is a group (or aggregate; agg) of around 200-300 very similar species of shrub in the rose family that are very hard to tell apart (1). Like roses, brambles are covered in sharp thorns that help to protect the plant from herbivores (and humans). The thorns also help to make brambles a safe haven for many small birds and other wildlife.

Brambles grow wild across most of Europe and in the UK they can thrive in most environments (1). The white or pinkish flowers are self-fertile and can still produce seeds even in the absence of fertilization (a process called apomixis) to produce an army of clone plants (2). Furthermore, brambles can produce suckers – new shoots from buds in the roots – which helps them rapidly cover an area of ground. As a result, brambles are often among the first plants to colonise abandoned plots of land. This is great for wildlife and the casual blackberry picker, but it’s not so helpful if you are trying to work on said piece of abandoned land…

When some friends and I took on an allotment this year, our plot had been neglected for a while and contained quite a lot of brambles. We removed a lot of the plants but have left some to be our own personal blackberry patch. Removing brambles is not a fun business as the thorns can cut through clothes (and gardening gloves). For several weeks in the spring my arms and legs were covered in scratches and I often found bramble thorns impaled in my fingers. If you don’t manage to completely remove the whole root, the bramble is quite capable of growing a fresh shoot so we’ve had a few cheeky brambles reappearing in the vegetable beds.

Despite my moaning about brambles I must say that the blackberry crop from the allotment has been great. It is kind of ironic that our most successful crop this year is something we weren’t deliberately growing. All in all, if I had to summarize my relationship with the bramble at the moment, I would say: “it’s complicated”.

While giving my undergraduate class a tour of a botanic garden, a university professor said that “we should only eat the parts of a plant that the plant wants us to eat”. He was referring to the fruit, which many plants encourage animals to eat in order to spread their seeds in the environment (though not all fruits are edible). I don’t think he meant us to take his advice literally, but it is sensible to eat plants with caution. Alongside famous poisons including belladonna and hemlock, plants produce a variety of other molecules that aim to deter animals from eating them. Some of these molecules – such as ricin, which is produced by the castor oil plant – are so poisonous that tiny quantities can kill you. Others, like caffeine or the anti-malaria drug quinine, have less dramatic effects on the human body that we may find desirable or useful.

I recently visited The Alnwick Garden in north-east England, which has a special garden dedicated to educating visitors about the potential dangers of plants. In fact, some of the plants on display in the Poison Garden are so dangerous that visitors can only enter as part of a guided tour. I really enjoyed the tour and if you are ever in the area I recommend you pay the garden a visit.

The tour included some well-known poisonous plants, but the main message I took home from the tour was that many common garden plants are also potentially dangerous if they touch your skin or you accidently eat them. Below are a few examples of common plants that aren’t as benign as they might first seem:

Rhubarb (Rheum x hybridium)

While the pink fleshy stalks of the rhubarb plant are safe to eat and are commonly used in desserts, the leaves are highly toxic (1). This is thought to be due to the presence of high levels of oxalic acid, which can interfere with chemical reactions in the body by combining with calcium and other metals.

Common ivy (Hedera helix)

This rapidly growing vine is a haven for wildlife and attracts at least 70 species of nectar-feeding insects in its native range of Europe and Western Asia (2). Contact with ivy can cause an allergic skin reaction in some people, due to a natural pesticide in the leaves called falcarinol (3). Regardless of whether you are allergic to ivy or not, you should avoid eating this plant because its leaves contain saponins, which can cause vomiting, convulsions and even death.

Common nettle (Urtica dioica)

Children quickly learn that contact with common nettles results in a painful stinging sensation and skin inflammation. This is due to a cocktail of molecules including histamine, serotonin and oxalic acid, which is released from hairs on the surface of the leaves. For more information check out this cool infographic by Compound Interest.

Common laburnum (Laburnum anagyroides)

All parts of this small tree are poisonous, due to the presence of a molecule called cytisine, which has a similar structure to nicotine and has similar effects on the body. Laburnam is a member of the pea family and cases of laburnam poisoning are often caused by individuals mistaking laburnum seeds for peas and eating them (4). Mild cases may cause nausea and vomiting, but laburnum poisoning can also lead to insomnia, convulsions and coma.

These are just a few examples of common garden plants that can be harmful to humans and other animals. Fortunately, you can protect yourself against these and other poisonous plants by taking simple precautions, such as wearing gloves while gardening and carefully identifying edible plants when foraging.

Author’s note: Sorry for the long silence on this blog. My life has been quite chaotic in the last few months due to several events (expected/not expected, good/bad) and so the blog has had to take a back seat. Things are calming down a bit now so I’m hoping to get back into posting regularly, probably about twice a month. As ever, I’m always keen to receive guest posts so if you are interested in writing for Plant Scientist, please do get in touch.

Last week this blog celebrated its third birthday. In that time I have gone from being a research scientist to working as an editor for a scientific journal and so the involvement of plants in my life has changed somewhat. Working with plants was one of my favourite parts of my old role in research and so its perhaps not surprising that I now do quite a bit of gardening in my spare time.

Until about a year ago, the extent of my gardening experience was a few herbs in pots outside and a bunch of low-maintenance houseplants. I wasn’t always very good at looking after these plants, so branching out to a whole, albeit small, garden has all been a bit of an experiment!

I’m happy to say that my gardening experiment has overall been pretty successful so far. I’ve managed to grow some edible vegetables and my garden looks much tidier and more colourful than it did when I moved in. Most importantly, now that I have an office job, I’ve really enjoyed having a good excuse to spend lots of my leisure time outside. However, my first year in the garden hasn’t been completely plain sailing as I ran into a few problems and disasters along the way. Here are the most useful lessons I have learnt along the way:

Be on the alert for pests – they WILL find your favourite plants. Last year, slugs and snails attacked my salad leaves and destroyed the marigolds I was growing. I tried out a few different methods to deter them from eating the rest of my crops and eventually settled on copper tape. Slugs and snails don’t like crawling over copper and so I could use the tape to make a pretty good barrier to defend a lot of my vegetable crops. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for my nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus), which became infested with hundreds of blackflies (a type of aphid) and withered and died soon after.

That plant support or structure might look tidy, but will it withstand the weather? I must admit that the first few structures I built to support plants were not all as robust as they should have been because I didn’t really appreciate how windy it would be in my garden. The canes holding up my tomatoes were blown over on several occasions, and the netting structure protecting my cabbages nearly flew away in a winter gale.

When digging in an overgrown patch of ground, keep an eye out for plants you might want to keep. Last year, I got a good crop of potatoes from the handful of tubers left in the vegetable patch by the previous occupants of the house. And just this week I discovered some parsnips growing amongst the grass of the overgrown allotment I’ve recently taken on with some friends. Being fairly hopeless at plant identification, I didn’t know what potato or parsnip plants looked like until I stumbled into them.

Work out what types of plants you like to grow and then grow them. I like to feel “productive” when I’m gardening, so I can spend hours tending to my vegetable patch and then forget to water my houseplants. As a result, I’ve tried to fill as much of my garden with fruit and vegetables as possible, and then used low-maintenance decorative plants to fill in the gaps and really shaded areas.

My main gardening project for this year is to work on an allotment with my friends. The plot hasn’t been cultivated in a few years so was pretty overgrown, but since we took on the tenancy a couple of months ago, we have managed to clear some parts of it and plant some soft fruit crops. Watch this space.

As you may know, my year did not get off to the best start and I’ve been having a bit of a break from blogging.

Thank you to everyone who volunteered to write guest posts during my break. My plea for help with the blog got a much bigger response than I had anticipated and this brightened what was otherwise a very tough time for me. It has been a real treat for me to host articles written by such a variety of different people and covering such different topics. Most of the guest articles are now up but there should be a couple more to come in the next few weeks.

I also want to thank the many other people who spread the word about my hunt for guest bloggers and sent me supportive messages. I feel really lucky to belong to such a supportive online community.

I’m starting to feel the urge to write again so I hope to be able to publish a science post on here in the next week or so. I always enjoy receiving guest posts so please do get in touch if there is something you would like to write about.